Got around to fitting the BigFoot into the Redstone XT Turbo. Pretty straight foward. Fit the XT-IDE card, fit the drive, attach cables and boot the system up using a suitable boot disk, create the partitions, format them making sure you sys the primary. I did all that using an MS Dos 6 boot disk with a few utilities on it. I then installed DRDos 6 on the thing.

Found a nice MS serial mouse in my stash that works well with GeoWorks. No need for loading a mouse driver in Dos.

It's good that this system has a flip top for easy access just like my original 286/12. I also noticed I'd fitted the Amstrad Adlib clone sound card to the beast at some stage. I doesn't have any joystick ports but I have a two port card if needed.

While I was waiting for all the software to be installed I had a gander through my stash of ISA cards. Half the stuff I forgot I had. Found my Media Vision Thunderboard and Sound Blaster cards. Also found a 16-bit ISA memory card with 2megs of dips on it with space for another 2megs. It was fitted in a 286 I scrapped. Need to ID it so I can find out a bit more info about the card. I'll make a separate thread about it.

I'll grab MS editor from my win98 box. It's easier to use than the DRDos editor.

PcBytes wrote:

So far I can recognize a proprietary (either HP or Gateway) Slot 1 mobo, something that looks like an ABIT AW9D-MAX, a ASUS H81M and a ECS K7S5A, and a Intel D875PBZ.

The others I can't identify.

2 H81i's. Abit IC-7 in the back, a couple of surprisingly standard Dell mATX boards, Abit IP35 Pro, Abit AW8-MAX, Asus P8H61 (I think a pin is missing), Asus A55BM, Asus Hybrid CFX, Epox 8K3A+, Gigabyte P55A. Got an Asus Q87M not in the picture waiting for a build, and of course separately stored a number of 386-486-early Pentium boards.

Good call on the slot 1 HP (needs cleaning) and K7S5A.

Ran CrystalDiskMark on an old 1.2GB Seagate hard drive.

I repaired a Matrox card I got today. It had its BIOS chip missing and I completely didn't notice that when the thing was being sold...

Now that’s dedication! The Millennium will pay you back, what a great card.

Did some rummaging through the boxes of computer stuff out in the shed. Haven't done it fo a long time. Some interesting items. About 6 Socket/Super Socket 7 mobos, a twin port games 8-bit card, an 8-bit FM radio card that works as a tsr in Dos and runs in Windows 3.1, a Commador 9 pin printer, lots of software and a 286/12 mobo with 1meg of ram on board which I am going to test tomorrow.

Tiido wrote:

I repaired a Matrox card I got today. It had its BIOS chip missing and I completely didn't notice that when the thing was being sold...

1) Let's form a mob and deal justice to the person who desecrated that video card.
2) If anything does, this repair qualifies as epic. Laying in bridge wire to replace SMD pads like that is absolutely amazing.

I agree, eh? I still need to fix my Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro card. It gets detected, but, the card has a faint smell to it.

Tiido wrote:

I repaired a Matrox card I got today. It had its BIOS chip missing and I completely didn't notice that when the thing was being sold...

Amazing work! Did you use a microscope/repair scope/cam thingy for the repair (and for the pics) and jigs or just hawk eyes and surgeon hands?

I've been ruminating on building a platform with a lot of arms for holding work/lights/endo-style cam. I have a small rolling desk next to my main desk which I use for projects. I have the cam, some flexible arms, and some other parts so far.

That Matrox fix is amazing indeed. I wonder what happened... Someone just pulled the original ROM off with force or whatever?
I like how you put a socket on there, you can't even see the repairs when the new ROM chip is installed.

My guess is they didn't lift the pins off correctly when they were desoldering the BIOS chip or the BIOS chip stopped working and attempted to fix it or decided not to fix it.

oeuvre wrote:

Ran CrystalDiskMark on an old 1.2GB Seagate hard drive.

Left it running and went for drinks? 🤣

Scali wrote:

That Matrox fix is amazing indeed. I wonder what happened... Someone just pulled the original ROM off with force or whatever?
I like how you put a socket on there, you can't even see the repairs when the new ROM chip is installed.

It doesn't look like accidental damage, I could see some tool marks on few traces so it was probably quite intentional. I actually wasn't gonna put a socket there but then the fear of the BIOS I burned not working made me use a socket just in case. Luckily the BIOS (I got it from VGAmuseum) worked on first try ~
EDIT: I think I know how this damage originated. There are these dimples in the pads... I think they're soldering iron tip caused, and the guy tried to lift up each pin manually by sliding it sideways or something. That can explain the marks in bottom traces too.

Merovign wrote:

Amazing work! Did you use a microscope/repair scope/cam thingy for the repair (and for the pics) and jigs or just hawk eyes and surgeon hands?

I don't use any magnifying tools etc. I can see close up really well but anything beyond my arms reach is blurry 🤣. I did use one of the closeup photos to exactly see what via goes to what pad, in top left spot there was some ambiguity. Sometimes my arms are shaky but then I just need to eat properly and it goes away 🤣.

I decided to combine the two (nearly) identical Tulip AT Compact 3 I have into one. One has a defective motherboard (onboard FDD controller not working, instability), but the other has acid damage from the batteries mounted above the board.

I tossed the affected RAM chips in some vinegar, but then I was busy for a while and found them again two weeks later. Some legs were pretty much dissolved. Not really a problem, I already lost one when a leg broke off.

Sockets replaced! Not tested yet.

Tiido wrote:

EDIT: I think I know how this damage originated. There are these dimples in the pads... I think they're soldering iron tip caused, and the guy tried to lift up each pin manually by sliding it sideways or something. That can explain the marks in bottom traces too.

I wonder why.
Is this a common BIOS type? I believe it can be re-flashed in software (I know I reflashed some of my Matrox cards back in the day)? So perhaps whoever removed it wanted to reprogram and use the chip in a different project?

Photos suggest original chip was 1MBit on this Compaq branded card which can be useful as a BIOS chip to some motherboards. I'm not sure what the motivations might have been to get it off. For just a BIOS update there's indeed no need to remove the chip, in can be updated in software. Just got to flick the protection DIP switch (which was also missing).

I never though a relatively modern mouse can be so yellowed.
I am hoping that out of these which I now got together, I will be able to build one relatively decent looking Netscroll mouse, maybe retrobright some parts....

Tiido wrote:

I don't use any magnifying tools etc. I can see close up really well but anything beyond my arms reach is blurry 🤣. I did use one of the closeup photos to exactly see what via goes to what pad, in top left spot there was some ambiguity. Sometimes my arms are shaky but then I just need to eat properly and it goes away 🤣.

Nothing, but respect. Your shaky arms do better work than anything I've soldered with steady hands. I have real troubles when it comes to small size soldering work like that.

Scali wrote:

Tiido wrote:

EDIT: I think I know how this damage originated. There are these dimples in the pads... I think they're soldering iron tip caused, and the guy tried to lift up each pin manually by sliding it sideways or something. That can explain the marks in bottom traces too.

I wonder why.
Is this a common BIOS type? I believe it can be re-flashed in software (I know I reflashed some of my Matrox cards back in the day)? So perhaps whoever removed it wanted to reprogram and use the chip in a different project?

Back in the day I knew a few eBay'ers that were convinced that BIOS ROMs and other firmware chips contained private information and needed to be removed before resale - no matter how much I tried to convince them otherwise. Weird as it sounds, my money is on this belief being alive and well and surviving to this day...

Today I installed a clean XP on a PC of a coworker who wanted a CD writer with Nero 6 out of it. I got a PCI-e Geforece 7300GT (ASUS Silent) for it as payment.

Looking up these cards on ebay (7300GT in general) they are pretty pricy and priced very close to the 7800GTX.
I'd understand a fairly high price for the AGP versions, since they should be about as good as a Radeon 9800Pro/FX5950, but with SM3.0 support and low TDP, but it's the same for PCI-e.
Did I miss something? Is there something wrong with the 7800 or is there is something exceptional about the 7300?